You can read part 1 and part 2
Camera Aperture... maths!
In this part we have to take into account the information that our camera contains in the projection section.
- First we import our 3D environment into Maya.
- When undistord our video, it might change size (mine didn't) but let's pretend it did, so we'll put THAT size in the Render Settings image size.
- With our camera selected, we go to the Shape section -> Enviroment -> imageplane [Create].
- If you are using a video, convert it to an image sequence and select Use Image Sequence.
- (put the lock on the camera so as not to move it by mistake)
- Now let's do this calculations:
From the video (old dimensions)
Orig. Width:1920
Orig. Height: 1080
After Undistortion (new dimensions)
New wight: 1945
New Height: 1105
Formula: Overscan % = new dimensions / old dimensions
My Overscan %
Wight:1.013
Height:1.023
Formula: New aperture dimensions = Overscan% x Nuke Camera Aperture dimentions
Nuke camera:
Formula: New aperture dimensions = Overscan% x Nuke Camera Aperture dimentions
New Aperture width: 36.27
New Aperture Height: 20.60
Add the new apertures in your camera (MAYA) -> (Camera's name)Shape -> Film Back and here we will change Camera Aperture (mm) numbers.
Assets and textures fix
As I mentioned before, I will be using the Warthog by TruongCGartist, but here are some other elements that I plan to use:
- Trunk by SebastianZander
- Fern by Petro.Stepaniuk (this file also include the Broadleaf plant)
- Rock by Andrea Spognetta (Spogna)
- Granite Rock by 3dhdscan
- Second fern by Batuhan13
With these elements, I found that some of them did not have normal textures or were normal in black and white, so I followed this tutorial by Matt Rittman, creating the normal maps in photoshop, I really liked the result :)
Once all the textures were connected in aiStandartSurface, I presented my progress to the instructor, he helped me a lot with several extra arrangements of textures.
First of all we add subsurfance to the plants, since in real life plants absorb light and look greener. It's like when we put our hand in front of the sun and we see it red.
Then we add fractal textures to the rocks.
We changed all the textures that were not Base Color or Occlusion to RAW, for a better rendering.
Check that in the speculars, Alpha is being detected in the lighting. (Alpha is luminance)
With all this, obtaining a better result but at the same time increasing the rendering time.
PROJECT WEEK 3: Render layers, better be ready
Render Layers and AOV's
This week I was motivated to have all the objects ready to render, with the amount of objects I have it was no surprise that I got many rendering layers, let's take a look at my layers and my AOV's.
Some stuff I was CHECKING CONSTANTLY:
- Every object need a alone-layer, without shadows. (Cast shadows off)
- Then a shadows layers, object with Override in Primary Visibility (off)
- If your planes are producing shadows than does not affect your main object, turn them off. (Cast shadows off)
- If you have a plane in front of the object, cast shadows and receive shadows OFF but primary visibility ON.
- Are masks working correctly? Check in main layers and shadow (specially on alpha preview)
- IF your AOV's is not affecting the layer, Override and enabled, for example my sss does not affect any of my rocks.
Rendering...takes forever
During this week Jamie suggested, emphasized, underlined! the importance of starting to render this week (April 14, the project is delivered in 22) the video must have at least 12 seconds of special effects.
Let's do numbers
12 seconds = 24 frames per second = 288 frames.
14 render layers = 4,032 frames
Each rendering frame takes at least a minute to render, sometimes a little longer.
My "wildpig_main" layer that contained all the AOV's you saw before, took 10 hours to render.
All other layers containing color but not Motion Vector, at least 7 hours.
All other layers containing color, but not Motion Vector and SSS (subsurface) for at least 6 hours.
and the layers of shadows that do not contain any AOV's about 5 hours.
Doing the math, it took me AT LEAST 85 HOURS to render EVERYTHING I had in Maya.
I couldn't leave room for mistakes, so before embarking on this adventure of not turning off my computer for days (coincidentally restarting it once a day so it wouldn't die) I rendered ALL MY OBJECTS in just one frame per object. In this way, while the rest of the more than 4,000 frames that were being rendered, I could start to order my nodes in Nuke, leaving them more or less like this:
Trial and error! Rendering my footage
I thought that when I would have my layers rendered it would just be to connect them to my document in Nuke and BE HAPPY!
But no, the errors appear: Copy1: Missing inputChannel, (Something something_#.exr not a Something something_#.exr)
Why is this happening? Could it be that as a human I have been wrong in some part of the process?
Many times we blame ourselves, because the program must be working, but in this case they were corrupted rendering files that for one reason or another did not render well.
It might have been because of my computer's capacity, memory space, or Maya crashed while rendering.
Either way the solution was to find ALL the frames that were rendered wrong.
For this, with a write node, I was exporting sequence of images by CG element, if some number was not exported it is because it was corrupted, I was doing this while writing down which object and frame were corrupted.
In PlantOnRock_shadows there 27 frames that were corrupted, just to give an example.
BUT I FIXED THEM ALL!!!!
The other problem I had was that my document was TOO heavy to render on my computer, so my option was to render one frame at a time (Spoiler: Didn't work, Nuke would close and something like this would appear in my Task Manager, 100% CPU and numbers between 7000-9000 in my Memory Nuke)
After repeatedly restarting my poor computer, I began to transfer my files to the virtual computer of the university but that was going to take HOURS, so also to have a BACKUP, I started rendering in parts:
- Undistorted Footage + PlanarTracker + Lens Distortion
- CG (Rock Back, Plant Back
- CG (Rock Front)
- CG (Plant Round, Plant on Rock)
- CG (Tree)
- CG (WildPig)
- CC + Filter
Reviewing I realize that the rock in the back is not positioned "perfectly" and they have a strange movement that will definitely be noticed, I COULD solve it with a tracker and transform.
But time is running out and I have other projects, so this is when we say goodbye to my Back rock and Back plant, they looked good but move badly :(
Last Fixing/ Little Details
Once finished with the rendering of the CGI elements, it is vitally important to review elements from the beginning again, first we have my PlanarTracker, where I have my bee design.
It looked good, but '' too perfect '' to be painted...
So I wanted to leave it more '' adapted '' to the door, for this I have used some tips from VFX Vibe where he uses radials as masks, it caught my attention and I wanted to use them to fix Colour Corrections , in this particular case I used a Ramp instead of radial (GrievePerspective shows a quick example of how it works with a Constant)
I thought ''Hey, it looks like what I do in Photoshop / Procreate'' and in that I remembered that in one of the sessions with Jamie he had used a node Merge to affect the colors, like layers in photoshop.
Experimenting a bit, I decided that the effect of multiplying the color of the door with the illustration of the bee is very close to what I wanted; adding a radial to leave the center of the bee a little more saturated.
Next problem: My color correction will oversaturate the sky a bit too much, see that green line between the sky and the house's roof? besides that burning of pixels in the branches of the tree ... I needed to repair this!
First, in my CC connect radials so that they will not affect the sky, once with the normal sky I applied a special correction and a Blur (the branches are far away, we do not need to see them detailed)
Finally Jamie gave my project a final feedback, especially with the latest color correction.
I can safely say that this is the final structure of my project.
Final Video + Breakdown
Special Feedback during the process
Here I will mention super important points in which I had problems and / or they delayed me in the completion of my project.
- First of all the complexity of the lens distortion, thanks to the support sessions I was able to achieve it, but I practically had to perform 4 camera trackers until it really worked and was the right size.
- Lose the fear of editing the textures of an object, none of my plants had a normal map so I had to find how to create them, adding an SSS channel also helped to bring them to life.
- Constantly check that AOV’s are selected in each render layer, my shadows do not need to have specular or diffuse, Override them makes the difference between a render of 10-7 hours to only 5 hours.
- PUT. NAMES. TO. EVERYTHING...I had 7 objects in my scene, constantly editing my textures in Hypershader and then putting everything together in Nuke.
- BACKUPS! I have 4 backups, and other Nuke files where I worked Lens Distortion, Camera Tracker and testing nodes for effects, better safe than sorry.
- Finally, learn when to give up, I tried to create a mask with the lockers of the door in the middle of the graffiti, I learnt how but to actually have a good result I needed to create key frames in the perspectives frames, not enough time for a little effect, so I changed my roto mask for a Roto Paint and it looks good!
If I have more time, I'll try to fix my rock in the background, add more flowers and some butterflies flying around! I did have some models for this but too little time.
Conclusions
This was a hard project with a lot of fixing, it shows how powerful is Maya and Nuke and how hard is to make all of this alone.
This project explored different areas that a student can specialize in; lighting, creation of scenes, storyboards, 3D maps, cameras, division of elements for rendering, AOV's, among many more.
The objective of this project is not only to demonstrate I know how to use these programs (Nuke and Maya) but also to understand how to reach a level of professional quality, the ability to organize and leave it ready for delivery.
It has been a great adventure, now I can say that I know how to create a BASIC VFX sequence, since the possibilities are endless.
Please feel welcome to write to me here or Instagram about this project, I am an open book.
Feel welcome to also check my animation blog.
Chao!